Does anyone here think this isn't weird?

[Mabouya]

I have a tattoo, and I can't imagine any of my loved ones wanting to preserve it after I'm gone. Plus, I can't help but think of the Buchenwald lampshade made from the skin of a camp prisoner.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/a...smid=share-url

"Their Loved Ones Died. Preserved Tattoos Offer a Way to Keep Them Close.

Laws in most states allow mourners to remove and preserve tattoos as memorial works of art. An Ohio company, Save My Ink Forever, is the pioneer."

[monadnocky]

Not five minutes ago I mentioned this article to my wife, to which she commented "eeeew."
Yeah, it's weird. But whatever helps, I guess...

[Chik]

It would have required a rather large frame for that of my maternal great grandfather... (Half sleeves, full back extending down the hamstrings.)

Closer to my professional realm, there are companies that offer to use your loved ones' ashes to make diamonds. You might know that laboratory grown diamonds are a thing now, currently taking 10% of the US engagement ring market. However, engineers / materials scientists doubt the claims about using human ashes when growing those diamonds.

[Too Tall]

That is no stranger than religious relics I reckon.

[rwsaunders]

The gent on the right with the motorcycle chain wristband…looks like he might enjoy the process.

[Matthew Strongin]

Not five minutes ago I mentioned this article to my wife, to which she commented "eeeew."

I'm sitting across the kitchen counter from my wife and just asked her if she'd want to preserve any of my tattoos (I have quite a few) when I die. Her response was similar..."F*ck no, eeeeeew. F*ck no."

FWIW, I don't really think it's weird. Or no weirder than a bunch of other shit our species does.

[Peter Polack]

It's just more evidence of the devolution of American society.

[vertical_doug]

James Gumb aka "Buffalo Bill" approved

[Octave]

It's just more evidence of the devolution of American society.

Or French (Dr. Villette), or Romanian (Nicolae Minovici), or one of the hundreds of other examples of human preservation techniques, Māori heads, etc...

Personally, I don't care what happens to my body after death, as long as the bulk of it returns to the earth, but if a piece is to be preserved for the joy of someone else, I don't see an issue with it. I buried my dog under a young fig tree when he died last year and I watch it grow every day with joyful thoughts of his life.

[Scott G.]

It's just more evidence of the devolution of American society.

Try the old documentary about the funeral industry, "The Loved One", funeral directors have had odd ideas for a long time.
The Evelyn Waugh book of the same name is good too.

[Too Tall]

James Gumb aka "Buffalo Bill" approved

Oh. Ahh. Perfect retort.

[Drew]

This seems less weird than keeping cremated remains close by.

[sk_tle]

I wonder if the other halves reacting by a eeeew wear leather jackets sometimes, have been riding horses or ever rode a bike with a Brooks or Berthoud saddle? Ultimately leather is just cadaver's old skin. The fact it comes from our or other species doesn't make it more or less disgusting.

I don't think it is any weirder than treating bodies and make them look like waxed puppets so we can show them in a funeral before letting them rot in a box or keeping ashes in a jar on a bookshelf. Ultimately, the deceased is dead so he doesn´t care anymore.

[kdawg]

I don't think it is any weirder than treating bodies and make them look like waxed puppets so we can show them in a funeral before letting them rot in a box or keeping ashes in a jar on a bookshelf. Ultimately, the deceased is dead so he doesn´t care anymore.

Some of us think that that is pretty weird too? Around here open caskets just aren't a thing.

[sk_tle]

Some of us think that that is pretty weird too? Around here open caskets just aren't a thing.

And that is valid too. Yet open or not isn't it weird to put some meat in a box to let it be eaten by small organisms? I mean if the point is to let nature take its course why bother with all of this uh?

[bigbill]

My grandfather died at 97 in 1997 in the room where he was born. Befitting his life as a farmer, he didn't want to be embalmed and wanted a pine box for a coffin. He got his first wish, and the funeral home came to the farmhouse, prepared him, and placed him in a coffin for the funeral. The coffin was pine, but it was more of a veneer like the sides of an early 90s Chrysler minivan. He wasn't allowed to have a plain box, and the monstrosity they called a pine coffin was 600 pounds empty. Too bad he died before human composting became acceptable in the US. He would have spent eternity in a pasture.

We have an urn of dog ashes from last fall, which we plan on scattering this fall. My mother-in-law's ashes are at my wife's sister's house. She was in the Peace Corps; we're working on how to send them to the far-flung places she served and loved.

[Tom]

Yeah, but aren't these guys cutting something off and putting it in a frame and hanging it on the wall? Not entirely the same as sticking somebody in a box and burying them in the ground. You're gonna display part of somebody to remember them by, why not put their genitalia in a shadow box?

Me, I'm going to have a big wooden longboat made. Set me adrift on the river after lighting that baby up.

Or do like Willie.

[j44ke]

As long as the firm isn’t called Jos. Mengele & Sons and they don’t make lampshades…

Shoot me out of a cannon!

[kdawg]

I’ve threatened my wife that if I’m not burned in the cheapest box possible that I’m going to haunt her forever.

Fancy caskets is just a scam.

[alexstar]

I believe there is a medical museum in Japan that has preserved tattoos, some of which are a century old at this point, and very large in scope - think whole back pieces and body suits. A little macabre by our standards, perhaps, but an amazing record of the craft.